Random thoughts on random songs

About ipodshuffle.com

Ipodshuffle.com has been operating as a music blog since 2003. We have no connection with Apple or the new iPod Shuffle - we simply liked the Shuffle function. Of course, we're as curious as everyone else, so here's some appropriate links:

Oh, how I love trying to figure out the vagaries of recommendation engines. Lots of hype re Pandora these days, but I'll just report that the first time I tried it, I entered in "David Bowie" and it decided I needed to be rockin' some Eddie Money. Hmmm... But the most common one I hit is the "Recommended for You" feature on Rhapsody, which pulls up some supposedly like-band recommendations based on your recent listening. Today when it came up with REO Speedwagon, Journey, *and* Foreigner I like to had a cow, as they say. (ok, they don't actually but you get the point...)

Not sure what really drove those recommendations - my last few days on Rhapsody, I checked out the Jen Trynin albums (catching up with...), played the latest Audioslave, and for some reason came across a "Punk Goes '80s" album with Sugarcult, Motion City Soundtrack etc doing 80's radio classics. And then went back to my old workday standby, the "downtempo" streaming radio channel. Somewhere in there was some odd combo which reminded their system of its own AOR glory days, which it wanted to make sure I shared in...

For some reason, Tom Verlaine's "Breaking in My Heart" - the Side 2 Tour De Force from his first solo album - has been running through my mind the past few days. In fact, I know the reason: "Torn Curtain" from Marquee Moon came up on the shuffle sometime last week, and I started wondering whether that solo album will ever make it back into print, at least on the digital side; "Breaking in My Heart" is the standout on the album, so thinking about the album put that song in my head.

But anyway, doing something completely unrelated the other day - raking leaves in fact - I realized that not only was that song running through my head, but that there were two others banging around in there, competing for literal "share of mind": the Stranglers' "Walk on By" and Nils Lofgren's "Valentine." And when I thought about it today, I realized that it wasn’t a coincidence that thinking of the one song also suggested the other two. As “Breakin In My Heart” plays on my mental jukebox, the guitar intro riff suggests the similar intro of the Stranglers' song, and the first piercing lead notes are sonic reminders of the lead in "Valentine," a very different song by a very different artist.

Meanwhile, The Lad has taken to watching “Kim Possible,” a show on Toon Disney, with a theme song about how “I’m just a normal high school girl, but sometimes I have to save the world” done in a faux Destiny’s Child style. The song’s chorus features the line “call me beep me if you wanna reach me” sung mostly on the same note, going down one step for the last word - and that little pattern always calls up the similar melody line of the RHCP’s “Aeroplane” (“I like pleasure spiked with pain and music is my aeroplane.”)

After a few decades of active listening, the several thousand songs in my head are coming together like some musical Pangaea, where an R&B flavored Disney theme song and a 10-year-old Chili Peppers line aren’t that far apart at all. Far from being on separate continents, they’re just a quick stroll across the Bering Strait from each other…

The news earlier this week that Bono and Geldof could be up for Nobel Peace Prize left me feeling vaguely unsettled and perturbed about the world. Live 8 / Aid etc notwithstanding, somehow the idea that someone I mainly remember for my own college radio faves "Rat Trap" and "I Never Loved Eva Braun" (and of course, that big ol' honkin hit that everyone else knows) being elevated to the Mandela / MLK level was not a good feeling.

Then I saw the headline on the the SXSW news digest for the day: "Indie Rockers Mock Geldof" and all felt right with the world again, or at least that little corner of it...

Walking out of the train this morning I noticed that the New York Post and the Daily News had come up with the exact same headline for the Michael Jackson story: "Boy, Oh Boy!" (give or take a comma). Which is a little surprising 'cause the News usually goes for a more "facty" headline, but I guess they couldn't resist in this case...

Because I'm a geek, I was reminded of the first time in my memory that the tabs had the same cover headline - a much more unlikely one for a much less all-consuming story in the mid 80's, with "DRAGNET OUT FOR COP KILLER." I think there may have been a few more instances since then, but if I learned anything from John Hughes movies, it's that you never forget your first time...

Thanks for the write-up, Guardian. Or as my previously-anarcho-cambridge-Crass-affiliated brother calls it, "The Gruiniad."

Living up to the expectations of The Media is big pressure, and since I have no time these days to actually write posts, maybe we'll just drop some Sneak Previews for now. Here's a list of some entries that I'm hoping to write when I get around to it (maybe in 17 years when everyone's gone to college):- how Eminem ruined Moby for me ... or was it the media?- unearthing the original version of songs we didn't even know were covers- Joe Strummer and The Redemptive Power of Rock (yikes)- Discovering a genius Mohammed Rafi song that 10 years later showed up in "Ghost World"- mix tape segues that are still in my head 20 years later

Apparently a BBC producer recently sent an e-mail to the Bob Marley Foundation requesting an interview with Bob. Only one problem...

Sometime in the early 90's, the label where I was working did a whole lot of deep budget catalog reissues, including some "Best of Leadbelly" type releases. A couple weeks after sending out promos we got a request from a rootsy public radio station for an autographed photo of Leadbelly to support the album.

"Keep on rockin! Best wishes, Huddie" is what I was going to write. Can't remember if I actually did or not...

All right, can all you mainstream media types stop trying to be "down with the kids" by referring to 50 Cent as "Fiddy"? That's right, Cnet. Talking to you, E Online. And can't forget these straight-up g's, holdin' it down for the 215.